Slamming ‘vaccine apartheid’ export not compatible with empty jab sites

The apparently growing hesitancy among many South Africans to have the Covid vaccination means that it is incongruous for us to complain about the fact the 32 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine filled in
this country have been exported to Europe.

Because of the slowing pace of people taking up the opportunity to get jabbed, our current problem in South Africa is not, as many feared some months ago, that we would run out of vaccine supplies.

The sad reality is that we may have to destroy some of our stocks which have reached their expiry dates without being utilised.

Yet, the story of the exported vaccines is still shocking … all the more so because the contract our government signed with J&J specifically precluded the authorities from preventing the export of the products.

While that may not have directly affected us here in South Africa, because of the adequate supply and dwindling demand, the rest of the continent will have been sorely prejudiced.

ALSO READ: Lesufi unimpressed with empty vaccination sites on weekends

These 32 million vaccines would have enabled 32 million Africans because the J&J vaccine is a “one shot” solution to improve their chances of not contracting coronavirus and being hospitalised, or dying, from Covid.

And the likelihood is that those vaccines would have gone to countries where a much higher percentage of
people have already been vaccinated and where the jabs may even be utilised as booster shots for those people.

This is exactly what health activists have been saying is “vaccine apartheid”, where the richer nations have and poorer, or developing, countries, do not.

Looked at through the broader lens of African history, this could also be viewed as yet another cynical, neocolonialist practice where the people of the South labour on plantations to make the rich of the North comfortable.